Eckhart Tolle Quotes and Sayings

by Remez Sasson

Eckhart Tolle is a spiritual teacher and author. He was born in Germany in 1948, and is now a Canadian resident. He is the author of books “The Power of Now” and “A New Earth: Awakening to your Life’s Purpose.”

Eckhart Tolle is not identified with any particular religion.

Eckhart Tolle has said that he had an “inner transformation” at the age of 29, and then spent several years wandering “in a state of deep bliss”, before becoming a spiritual teacher.

Below, you will find some of Eckhart Tolle quotes, collected from various sources.

Eckhart Tolle Quotes about Present Moment, Spirituality, Liberation and More

1. “You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are.”

2. “When you complain, you make yourself a victim. Leave the situation, change the situation or accept it. All else is madness.”

3. “To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important. This total reversal of the truth accounts for the fact that in the ego mode the mind is so dysfunctional. It is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because without it – who are you?”

4. “Internal and external are ultimately one. When you no longer perceive the world as hostile, there is no more fear, and when there is no more fear, you think, speak and act differently. Love and compassion arise, and they affect the world.”

5. “Meet everyone and everything through stillness rather than mental noise.”

6. “To be conscious of Being, you need to reclaim consciousness from the mind. This is one of the most essential tasks on your spiritual journey.”

7. “Most people treat the present moment as if it were an obstacle that they need to overcome. Since the present moment is Life itself, it is an insane way to live.”

8. “What a liberation to realize that the “voice in my head” is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that.”

9. “Whatever the present moment contains, accept is as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life.”

10. “I have little use for the past and rarely think about it.”

11. “Thinking and consciousness are not synonymous. Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought.”

12. “Focus your attention on the Now and tell me what problem you have at this moment.”

13. “The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some superhuman accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being.”

14. “The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly — you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken you over.”

15. “Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.”

17. “To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation.”

18. “At the deepest level of Being, you are one with all that is.”

19. “Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meet. It is the body’s reaction to your mind – or you might say, a reflection of your mind in the body.”

20. “The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly—you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you.”

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21. “Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.”

22. “The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.”

23. “Love, joy, and peace cannot flourish until you have freed yourself from mind dominance.”

24. “Spiritual Awakening is awakening from the dream of thought.”

25. “Spiritual awakening – is becoming awake to the aliveness of this moment.”

26. “You are the light of the world. You are the consciousness that illuminates the world. Know yourself as that, and that’s freedom, liberation, awakening, the end of suffering and madness. And it’s happening right here.”

27. “Nothing ever happened in the past that can prevent you from being present now, and if the past can’t prevent you from being present now, what power does it have?”

28. “As far as inner transformation is concerned there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anybody else. All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter.”

29. “Even if you achieve your outer purpose, it will never satisfy you if you haven’t found your inner purpose, which is awakening, being present, being in alignment with life. True power comes out of the presence; it is the presence.”

30. “Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior. You are beneath the thinker. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the love and joy beneath the pain.”

31. “When you recognize that there is a voice in your head that pretends to be you and never stops speaking, you are awakening out of your unconscious identification with the stream of thinking. When you notice that voice, you realize that who you are is not the voice – the thinker – but the one who is aware of it.”

32. “Instead of asking “what do I want from life?,” a more powerful question is, “what does life want from me?”

33. “When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it. The mind in itself is a wonderful tool. Dysfunction sets in when you seek your self in it and mistake it for who you are.”

34. “Accept – then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.”

35. “You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.”

36. “Enlightenment means rising above thought, not falling back to a level of an animal or a plant. In the enlightened state, you will use your thinking mind when needed, but in a much more focused and effective way than before.”

37. “Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.”

38. “You are not the voice in your mind, but the one who is aware of it.”

39. “Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.”

40. “All you need to know and observe in yourself is this: Whenever you feel superior or inferior to anyone, that’s the ego in you.”

Eckhart Tolle Quotes – Power of Now

Here are a few of Eckhart Tolle Quotes from The Power of Now.

1. “Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it’s no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing.”

2. “As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you act out the present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love – even the most simple action.”

3. “The moment you realize you are not present, you are present. Whenever you are able to observe your mind, you are no longer trapped in it. Another factor has come in, something that is not of the mind: the witnessing presence.”

4. “If you are drawn to an enlightened teacher, it is because there is already enough presence in you to recognize presence in another.”

5. “Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger.”

6. “Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.”

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About the Author

Remez Sasson is the author and creator of Success Consciousness website. He is the author of books and articles that motivate and help people to improve their life, achieve success, gain inner strength and inner peace, and become more positive and happy.